Broken Frontier

Jana the jungle girl faces off against a monster straight out of H.P. Lovecraft. Will this creature prove too much for the warrior?

Dynamite’s Jungle Girl series continues on in the footsteps of Dynamite’s other cheesecakey warrior woman: Red Sonja. There is a big difference between Sonja’s tales and those of Jana, however, and that difference is quite clear as "Season 2" ends here.

Jana has been thrown into an undersea cave kingdom populated by violent fish people and a crazed, mutated human all worshiping a gigantic creature. Jana has only one chance to survive the encounter with the monstrous "god" but even should she succeed she must still escape the caverns. Luckily for Jana her motley band of friends are willing to race into danger as well on her behalf… of course, that does not mean all of them will be lucky enough to survive the experience.

Plotter Frank Cho and scripter Doug Murray definitely know how to build action-packed fight scenes. The problem here is that the comic really is just one, long fight scene and the fight in question does not give us any more characterization on Jana and only slightly more characterization for her friend and cohort Togg. Many of the recent writers on Red Sonja have perfected the knack of using the fight scenes to actually advance the character – give little insights into what makes her tick – but there is none of that here. In fact, the whole battle ends up seeming flat and unexciting because there is little dramatic tension. Readers are well aware of the fact that the writers are not going to kill off their main character so there is no dramatic tension there and the climactic battle(s) occur against apparently non-sentient creatures so there is no antagonistic tension to be had either. This isn’t a pair of enemies facing off and with the opponent being little more than a creature there is no personal level to the conflict either. The entire comic, including the ending, just seems cobbled together – a string of events loosely held together by narrative rubber bands.

Artist Adriano Batista does a good job overall with this issue. Occasionally his lines get a little rough and scratchy and his background become a little too indistinct compared to the rest of the comic but he does a good job creating the creatures for the fight sequences. The antagonists here may not have a lot of personality but at least Batista imbues them with menace and gruesomeness enough that the reader can take them seriously. The H.P. Lovecraftian touches to the designs are also a lot of fun.

I remember the old days of TV season cliffhangers… in which the really good ones would leave you gasping for breath and wondering how you could wait three months to find out what happened next. While Jungle Girl Season 2 looks to be headed for a "season 3" there is none of that sense of anticipation and breathless excitement.